Leaderboard

Hopefully this year's return of Grand Carnivale will also bring back the tasting cards. My favorite part of Carnivale 2023 was the tasting card for 10 items, especially since I could use it over multiple visits! I miss Hot Summer Nights/Royal Rhythms from 2019 and 2021, or just having a live band on Bandstand for that matter. Few moments beat getting to join the conga line as they played "Hot Hot Hot"! I agree that I-Street needs the orchestral music back (NOT the covers that played 2020-21). The jazz was cool but my KD visit last April revealed just how much I miss hearing those beautiful orchestral pieces on our I-Street. This is a long shot at this point, but I still have a tiny shred of hope for Eiffel Tower and WindSeeker to be able to stay open for the fireworks again, sometime in the future. I understand the lasers and drones prohibit their operation during recent shows and that would require a significant change, but I dearly miss being able to watch the fireworks from nearly 300 feet up. Not to mention that unique opportunity had set KI's fireworks experience apart from the others. From my personal experience, WindSeeker fireworks rides are a core memory from when Vortex was still here, and I loved still getting to experience them after Vortex left...at least through 2021. Chalk it up to nostalgia, but I really want those fireworks rides back...

Hopefully if there is a new Bandstand show it is more like Royal Rhythms, and of course a live band would be nice. I appreciated the jazz for not being the pop music or orchestral covers but I would certainly welcome a loop like Kings Dominion.

Yes. A quick Google search yields dozens of articles about Six Flags and other chains implementing systems like this. It takes a fair amount of planning to utilize this program. The program requires getting the pass and having a doctor’s note. You can’t just register at Guest Services. Not putting this out there as early as possible is a huge disservice to guests who are affected by different abilities. Many will be disappointed who do not have this new policy properly communicated to them and get turned away from the needed accommodations.

Yes, I mentioned it in my post lol

Per Marcus LeShock on Facebook: JUST IN: The Village of Gurnee Zoning Board has approved a request from Six Flags Great America to build solar shade structures in their parking lot. These 6.4 megawatt solar systems would help lower Great America’s electric bill and provide shade for vehicles parked underneath. These structures would also have security cameras installed, along with LED lighting for nighttime hours. They are designed by a company called Solar Optimum, who also installed these carports at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California. This project now moves to the Gurnee Village Board for full approval. It’s unclear when the carports would be constructed and installed on the parking lot. I wonder if the former Cedar Fair parks will see solar panels down the road?

Four took the money and ran before it is run into the ground https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250310666469/en/Six-Flags-Announces-Nomination-of-Four-New-Independent-Directors#:~:text=CHARLOTTE%2C N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE,its Board of Directors at

Honestly I'm not sure what part of the ride was supposed to be 3-D. It just made me dizzy and kind of made the glasses worthless.

"Back in my day, amusement parks used to announce closures before they actually closed, not after" "your crazy pops, why on Earth would they do that?"

Executives always thrive. The hardworking employees remain increasingly crushed, hopeless.

We have such a beautiful park and are so lucky to have people that are passionated about the park in high ranking positions.

It costs way more to maintain a large structure and keep staffing when you could be losing money vs having a plot of land ready to go for a new expansion opportunity. I'll say this now, I know there will be something being removed at KI without a doubt; as it's happening chainwide. Xtreme Skyflier's removal doesn't hurt any integral attractions, nor does it really affect the overall guest experience like an Invertigo removal or Congo Falls. I've been around the block enough to know people on the inside but also know how the park works. I don't see Koontz wanting to have a ride like Monster or Shake Rattle & Roll removed, this is a safe and effective move to cut costs and give the opportunity to have a sizeable expansion pad.

Six Flags set the tone with off season ride closures and now other parks are following suit:

Lay offs have now affected Carowinds: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/article299317534.html

Which Hershey co sponsors Snowflake Lake with Kroger?

But a key takeaway from your example is that it is HERSHEY Park. They will obviously advertise their brand throughout the park as it is a park mostly themed to what they sell.

You missed one of the most notable ride sponsors: Top Gun, presented by Gillette Mach 3. In 1986, before the country show, one of the performers backstage would say after a "Delta Gets You There" jingle before the cast ran out on the stage, "Kings Island, Kings Productions and Delta Airlines are proud to present Deep in the Heart of Country."

I'm kind of numb to the sponsor thing. Its been around so long I look past it. Lest we forget KI was, essentially one big Sponsorship... built to capitalize and propagate Taft and Hanna-Barbera Productions. Attraction "Sponsors" are hardly unique to SF.... Heck KI opened several attractions with commercial names plastered all over them. Sherwin Williams, Bank America, Kahn's, Rainbo Bakers, Coke, Marathon Oil, Fotomat etc. KI has had hundreds of them over the years. Remember Kodak Photospots? Or Kenton's Cove Keelboat Canal sponsored by Kayak Pools? How about Landscaping by John Deere? Shows at the American Heritage Music Hall sponsored by Chevrolet? One could go one and on. Granted the ride cars didn't necessarily have the sponsor's names on them - but the signage and park paraphernalia sure did. Finally, let's not discount the Paramount Years... where most every new attraction's theme was essentially a commercial for a dated movie title.

It appears KD isn’t the only park issuing layoffs: https://www.screamscape.com/html/legoland_florida.htm#general

Well, I can now Officially say this 'Lovely" company has been run by 2 Dicks I can't stomach the sight of. The difference was I was still giving my money to them when the other Dick was Head of the show.

Another laid-off employee who asked to remain anonymous said they believed the layoffs were company wide and impacted closer to 80 Kings Dominion workers. "We were called to be in a meeting that would take place five minutes later. We were given a brief speech about how appreciated we were and then handed our papers. We were told to turn in our badges and collect our items," that worker shared. "As we collected our items and ourselves, mangers remained in the room reminding us we had to leave and could not take long. It was very emotional for everyone involved but the lack of empathy from management was the worst. They knew about this decision at least a week prior and still decided to blindside everyone." Kings Dominion layoffs: 'This has caused panic'

Lookin' like the back of a beater 2003 Honda Civic with all those stickers

I always enjoyed helping out in other areas of the park during the years I worked in the Kings Island marketing department. I parked cars, checked restraints on The Beast, The Racer, Diamondback and Mystic Timbers, made hundreds of pizzas at LaRosa's on International Street, the Festhaus and in Rivertown (I always loaded them up with extra sauce and cheese!), worked games at the basketball by The Racer, Wac-A-Mole, Football Toss, Ring Toss, and 3-Point Challenge, took shifts fielding calls in the Call Center, helped out in the Picnic Grove and Festhaus cleaning tables, worked in the admissions booth selling tickets and season passes, and worked the front gate turnstiles scanning tickets and season passes. I absolutely loved doing these different jobs and always looked forward to getting the call to help out elsewhere.

Sell? Well, now, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Plenty of exciting changes are on the way that will be sure to increase shareholder value!

I bought a lot of FUN stock during the pandemic and did very, very well. I'm selling most off this month as I can see the obvious and inevitable deterioration of their product.

And for anyone that visited KD last year or looked at any socials comments, the park was busy and clearly understaffed - a lot more food/drink places closed than at KI. Granted some of that lack of staff was a lot of seasonal associates that were not hired, but this will have a bigger impact. There are many times that full-timers chip in at KI when staffing is low. Same with KD and other parks. There were times Greg Schied, then GM of KI, could be seen checking parking passes/taking parking tolls at make-shift parking tolls on the south exit during busy days, along with Don. Wasn't uncommon to see Don checking restraints at The Beast. And I am sure they helped out elsewhere also. And many full-timers do similar things. Losing that many full-timers will have an impact. Even more so in this instance as it wasn't like they combined two parks into one and reduced because of duplicate positions. I expect to see more of this happen as the board attempts to make good on their promise of $200M in savings that they said would result because of the merger....more closures and reductions in staff is likely to continue. One thing that won't happen is their bonuses won't be reduced.... And the morale of remaining employees has an impact as well...

Further eroding the guest experience. Not just with the reduced staff and the problems that will cause, but with the affect on morale of remaining staff.

Fair reporting, the media just doing their job, it's just unacceptable by some of the people that make those decisions as to who is and who isn't invited to media day.

Yep, and Six Flags has kept the season pass prices incredibly cheap.

It's a difficult conversation to have and one that will be tricky at best to play through (not just for SF) for companies. When the pandemic hit, people were content to sit at home and collect $$ from the government - some continued after the COVID threat had subsided. This forced companies like SF, CF, Disney, Universal, etc... to bait potential employees with higher pay- almost a bidding war with the government- to entice people to come back to work. ie- scarcity drives up the price. This also caused that nasty term, "inflation." I was in a conversation with someone back in 2021 when our family bill at Chipotle was $28.56 - and told them that you can't just increase the rate of pay from $9/hr to $15+/hr and it not affect prices. They were CERTAIN it would not. That same order at Chipotle today is $44.74. Bringing this back to the Kings Island's of the world, and their peers- this brings the rate of pay back down to where the market will bear it. Tracked out over a 50 week year, if it were full time, most of the jobs at the seasonal level are not $40,000/year jobs. If they were to keep pay at those rates... be prepared for higher prices of everything at the parks, moreso. If other companies do this, a new term is entered: "Deflation." Which could also bring along it's cousin "Stagflation." THEN: welcome to the post-Carter 1980s.

^I guess the register isn't gonna be invited to media day (but they already knew that)

Solar shades would be a good reason to increase Preferred Parking prices to that $60 mark (just kidding)! I would take solar parking shades at KI as a positive merger addition. I think most of the legacy CF parking lots need a good redesign though. Maybe not to the extent of building parking garages—that sounds expensive—but a dedicated bus drop off with infrastructure, raised sidewalk pathways, small planters, solar shades, and trams are all good options for improvement. Planters, rock beds, and bioswales would also prevent rule-averse guests from parking in non-spaces while breaking the monotony of the parking lot.

That might mean they need to repave the parking lot so this would never happen.

I think whatever happens at Great Adventure is going to be the defining event for me of Zimmerman's era at Cedar Fair/Six Flags. I've kinda gotten the vibe for a few years that, post Ouimet, Cedar Fair never had a strong sense of direction. Ouimet attempted to aggressively attract families while improving the value of what your ticket got you, which is where semi-themed new rides, non-typical shows (e.g. Cirque Imagine and the like), LARP-based experiences like Ghost Town Alive, (a mild attempt at) new dark rides, and higher-quality food offerings came from. Zimmerman at CF seems to have lopped off the more pricey parts but otherwise attempted to keep that status quo. Then COVID happened, and I feel like the goal was to position the company for the merger through cutting costs to make the books look good. At this point, I feel like they've announced the immediate closure of a third of Great Adventure. If Six Flags and Zimmerman are serious about bringing a quality experience (to stay in line with the Ouimet philosophy), in my opinion, we'll see more than just a coaster in that area. We'll see!

Cedar Point General Manager Carrie Boldman to step down - cleveland.com Sounds fishy to me.

Having visited Carowinds this year, I would say the theming in Aeronautica landing is pretty good. The whole area had a nice feel, and had background music playing that made it feel like a Disney type experience. Definitely a unique area. I would hope that Action Zone gets some love at some point. Obviously, the Vortex plot needs a replacement. I still wouldn`t mind seeing a flat ride in Area 52, since both rides back there are 54" height requirments.

I honestly anticipated some of this reallocation of assets within the first few years. The fact that, from what I have been hearing/seeing, it's a majority legacy SIX assets is a somewhat interesting surprise up to this point. Better yet, I'm curious to see if the "special arrangement" water parks and parks that the SIX chain owns will remain in the future; as I honestly don't believe parks like Darien, or Frontier City remaining as active parks in the foreseeable future.

I think a change to some of the things guests regularly use may come in the near future as well. Things like maps, apps, websites, drink bottles (as seen above), branding on cups/plate covers, etc. could be subject to look different sooner rather than later. We've already seen the restructuring of Six Flags passes to match the Cedar Fair model as a start. For example, why use 3-4 different park guide/map design companies (CF physical map style, CF mobile app map style, SF physical map style, and maybe SF mobile app map style) when everything could be done through 2 (physical & mobile app maps)? Different map styles shown below. Kings Island summer 2024 park map Kings Island 2024 mobile app map preview (maps created by MapLayr) https://attractions.io/learn/cedar-fair-maplayr-partnership Six Flags Over Texas summer 2024 park map

Well everyone knows that looney tunes has an "interesting" history to say the least. In a world that we can't have br'er rabbit, br'er fox, br'er bear and zipidy do da day I'm shocked that we can have kids areas themed to Yosemite Sam, Daffy Duck, and Bugs Bunny. I know the newer looney tunes are a lot more politically correct in terms of their style of humor but I'd be curious if the chain is looking to retire the looney tunes IP...???

Here are some graphics from their presentation when talking about long term goals and objectives

I would agree with that! They are just now getting into the restructuring of positions. Next season we will start seeing the results of those changes.

I think it’s still too early to tell. However, I will say the park experiences I have had this season is better than last.

I’m sitting here, wondering what is going to be the most obvious change that non-enthusiasts will see from this merger in the coming years.

It looks like the 2025 Cedar Fair style bottles will be used throughout the whole chain next year!

Imagine showing this to someone from a year ago with parks like Kings Island and Cedar Point on the Six Flags website.

Well now the site seems to be functioning again, so I'm not sure what they were doing. Maybe some testing.

Let us have a moment of silence

There have never been separate all park, and home park only drink plans. They have just always been chain wide and it’s unlikely anything is changing.